The subject matter disclosed herein relates to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for industrial or medical applications.
In MRI systems, a highly uniform, static magnetic field is produced by a primary magnet to align the spins of gyromagnetic nuclei within a subject of interest. The nuclear spins are perturbed by a radiofrequency (RF) transmit pulse, encoded based on their position using gradient coils, and allowed to equilibrate. During equilibration, faint RF fields are emitted by the spinning, processing nuclei and are detected by a series of RF receiving coils. The signals resulting from the detection of the RF fields are then processed to reconstruct a useful image.
Hydrogen (1H) is a gyromagnetic nucleus often observed using MRI. For example, an MRI may be used to analyze and distinguish hydrogen in different local environments within the subject of interest (e.g., hydrogen in water, hydrogen in fats, and so forth). Other gyromagnetic nuclei (e.g., 13C, 19F, 23Na, etc.) may also be measured using MRI. However, in order to image more than one type of gyromagnetic nucleus in the subject of interest (e.g., 1H and 13C), a different set of RF receiving coils is typically used for each nucleus of interest. Further, removing and replacing the RF receiving coils often entails re-alignment of the coil to the imaging region, consuming technician time while increasing machine downtime.